But then lucidity came, and I thought of another possibility. A possibility even worse. Perhaps Eric had received my letter in London.

Eric’s face entered my mind. It hovered, pale, with a small smile: a familiar face, become a nightmare.

Was Eric an agent of the government, an informer? London, and the shop in Islington with books about Mandela that he’d written about in his letter? Perhaps that was Eric doing field work, research, for the government, finding what was out there, overseas. Was that it?

Was Eric sending information from London, helping to infiltrate and undermine the resistance?

I knew about such agents, I knew they were everywhere. Never, never, would I have dreamed Eric was one of them.

And leaving me and Howard out of it? Maybe that was the worst of all.

Was that Eric’s way of being a friend, was it?

I imagined it, Eric’s communication with his superiors: the owners of the house have nothing to do with it, they’re harmless. Kline does big corporate work for you guys, he’s not a political guy. Leave him out of it. The wife: harmless. She paints pictures. LEAVE HER OUT OF IT. LEAVE KLINE OUT OF IT.

The wife: harmless. She paints pictures. LEAVE HER OUT OF IT.

That’s what I imagined, as I lay.

SIDNEY WAS CALLED. He came and gave me sleeping pills, which I took, and I told you I’ve never taken a drug. I heard Sidney tell Howard a psychiatrist was needed, he could do nothing to help any more. Howard said nothing, he could say nothing about what had happened.

And then my parents arrived.

I don’t know what Howard told them. Jacqueline is sick, that’s all.

THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION which began in 1996 didn’t discover who betrayed Joseph Weiss to the police in March 1973. It turns out that history doesn’t record everything that happened, every last fact.

Howard, eighty-three years old when he died last year, never knew who betrayed Joseph. I never told him.

Helena doesn’t know.

Only you know who betrayed Joseph to the security police, now.

TODAY HELENA CALLED ME and we had a long argument about La Sylphide, about Stephen and Marie. You’ll enjoy it, Mom, why don’t you go? They’ll have the best seats. Come on, Mom, go. She sounded exasperated.

What I don’t like is how she tells Stephen and Marie her worries, and then they start worrying. And then they ambush me with a plan. Is it not enough for me to say to Helena I don’t want to go to the ballet, and have her leave it at that?

MANY WEEKS AFTER the March day of 1973 when Joseph was taken, I started to recover. I recovered enough to look after the children again, and to go through the semblance of an ordinary day.

Perhaps Sidney’s pills helped me.

My parents in the spare room also helped. They knew and understood nothing of what had happened, but they could see something had happened. Perhaps my mother thought it was a problem between me and Howard, I don’t know. Now and then she’d look at me and say, what happened, Jacqueline? This enraged me, and she quickly learned not to ask anything anymore.